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]]>By some estimates, there are well over 100 million managers of people in the world. Since the New Year rolled around, many of those managers have been in the midst of their organization’s annual performance review cycle. Employees have been or are about to sit through a one-hour performance review, based on their efforts over the past year.

A few of them are actually enjoying it.

With regards to the robots — who are coming for our jobs — will they love performance management too?

Forced Performance

But first, some background. It’s long been sport in the corporate world to take potshots at the performance management process. There are several reasons for the pervasive disdain and melancholy that drips from office walls and laptop screens on behalf of performance management processes.

First, there is an organization’s fixation on performance stack ranking. It’s the process where employees are pitted against one another as the manager is encumbered to fill out a bell curve of annual performance for her team. Forced to plot employees against an arbitrary curve — where a certain number of employees must be classified as low, medium or high performers to fill out the curve — it creates angst for the manager, and depression, envy, guilt, rage or happiness for the employee. But, as Josh Bersin brilliantly notes in his Forbes post entitled, “The Myth Of The Bell Curve: Look For The Hyper-Performers,” we need not use this process any longer:

Research conducted in 2011 and 2012 by Ernest O’Boyle Jr. and Herman Aguinis (633,263 researchers, entertainers, politicians, and athletes in a total of 198 samples). found that performance in 94 percent of these groups did not follow a normal distribution. Rather these groups fall into what is called a “Power Law” distribution.

There is proof the bell curve of performance is bogus, but employee stack ranking remains entrenched in an organization’s performance management practices. (Thanks Jack Welch, although he now refers to it as ‘differentiation‘.) To further the point of stack ranking, in Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense — written by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton — the authors state, “performance rankings can lead to destructive internal competition, which can make it tough to build a culture of knowledge sharing.” Well that’s just great.

Second, annual performance classifications are simply a cop-out for bad leadership. I don’t personally have anything against organizations who use a fair (and non-bell curve mandated) performance classification system — after all, employees do seem to appreciate a formal classification — but to do so annually is a bit like waiting for the Easter Bunny to show up each year and then wondering how many chocolate eggs might be waiting for you.

For me, the Easter Bunny of performance management should come monthly, preferably bi-weekly, but ideally weekly or even daily. In their book, The Progress Principle, authors Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer referred to a study that claimed, “of all the events that engage people at work, the single most important – by far – is simply making progress at meaningful work.” And how does an employee make progress at meaningful work? In part, it’s the direct manager that is providing a coaching and supporting role as frequently as is possible throughout the daily efforts of the employee. Performance management, therefore, is more like brushing your teeth (daily, three times a day ideally) versus the once a year Easter Bunny visit. Leadership, ergo, is about coaching and developing the performance of employees all the time, not once a year.

About Those Robots

They’re coming, so we best prepare for them.

In 1982 Time magazine declared the personal computer its “Machine of the Year.” Time publisher John A. Meyers wrote, “Several human candidates might have represented 1982, but none symbolized the past year more richly, or will be viewed by history as more significant, than a machine: the computer.” I don’t recall my Commodore 64 or Apple Lisa computer ever having to go through a performance review like us mere mortal humans. Those lucky computers.

But about those robots … they are definitely coming soon to an organization near you. Authors Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson of the brilliant book, The Second Machine Age, state rather chillingly:

“After spending time working with leading technologists and watching one bastion of human uniqueness after another fall before the inexorable onslaught of innovation, it’s becoming harder and harder to have confidence that any given task will be indefinitely resistant to automation.”

Comforting, I know.

Let’s visit the country capital of all things robots, Japan. A hotel, scheduled to open July 17, 2015 will soon be staffed by robots where they will “provide porter service, room cleaning, front desk and other services to reduce costs and to ensure comfort.” President of the hotel and amusement park, Hideo Sawada, mentioned at a news conference, “In the future, we’d like to have more than 90 percent of hotel services operated by robots.” I can’t wait for the day R2D2 brings me ice for the ice bucket, but I’m a bit alarmed by a robot who is employed to “ensure comfort.”

Not to be outdone, Nestlé Japan has announced it will begin using robots in December of 2015, “to sell Nescafé Dolce Gusto and Nescafé Gold Blend Barista coffee machines in home appliance stores.” I’m not certain if it’s a translation issue, but the company has decided to name the robot Pepper. I don’t know about you, but anyone (or any robot) called Pepper trying to sell me coffee is a tad pungent.

Japanese banks are also getting in on the C3P0 craze. Nao is a 58cm tall robot about to start ‘employment’ in April of this year at Japan’s biggest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. “Robots can supplement services by performing tasks that our human workers can’t, such as 24-hour banking and multilingual communication,” said Takuma Nomoto, the chief manager of information technology at the company. Last I checked, humans are in fact capable of working at times outside the normal 9-5 time clock and many workers are even capable of speaking multiple languages. But I digress.

The Ultimate Robotic Question

My ultimate question (cheekily and with a dash of humour) is intended to address the pending avalanche of robots earmarked for organizations everywhere. They’re coming, so it’s best we prepare. Is HR (or perhaps it should be IT) ready to add the robots to the existing performance management practices already established in the organization? After all, if humans are currently suffering from the indignation that is the ‘annual review’, shouldn’t the robots suffer too?

For example, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reported only 26 percent of employees were satisfied with performance management processes in their organization. I say let’s add robots to the mix. Let them have just as much fun as the employees are having with the annual performance review rhetoric. Sadly, Sibson Consulting discovered even worse results, where only 5 percent of respondents graded their company’s performance management practices at the highest level on a 5-point scale.

To rub salt in a wound, the firm also found that 58 percent of HR managers actually disliked their own performance management practices. Now how is a robot ever going to enjoy being part of their organization’s performance management system if HR won’t even fess up to liking it themselves? Maybe the robots should work in HR?

Deloitte has even come out and suggested “Performance Management is Broken” claiming”only 8 percent of companies report that their performance management process drives high levels of value, while 58 percent said it is not an effective use of time.”

When Mercer conducted their Global Performance Management Survey, asking the question, are company performance management approaches effective, 51 percent of respondents claimed their planning process needed work, 42 percent stated their linkage to compensation decisions required improvements, and 48 percent suggested their overall performance management approach needed to be improved. Incidentally, the firm surveyed performance management leaders from 1,056 organizations representing 53 countries around the globe, so not even those responsible for performance management are 100 percent onside with the process and practices.

If successful companies such as Microsoft, Adobe, Juniper Networks and Expedia have done away with the madness that is the stack ranking process of performance management — while witnessing, according to research firm i4cp, “increases in either bottom line revenue or employee engagement, or sometimes both” — isn’t it time for all organizations to do the same? Isn’t it time to have a rethink about the entire performance management system before the robots arrive?

Bob Rogers, president of DDI (a leadership development company) says in his book, Realizing the Promise of Performance Management that this type of employee segregation “causes damage by filtering employees from the bottom, and causes changes in people’s behavior, and not to the good.” From firsthand experience I’ve witnessed the nutty behaviours of managers and employees alike when it comes time for the annual performance management process. Favourtism becomes an issue. The derogatory term “managing up” makes an appearance. Vendettas surface. Finally, the bell curve quota creates mental anguish for a leader and the team members particularly when the team is perfectly functioning, if not high performing. When the robot begins to out-think the human — perhaps the intelligence explosion often referred to as the ‘singularity‘ — it will probably be smart enough to recognize it’s time to do away with much of the performance management nuttiness that exists today. How ironic would that be.

In the meantime, what should we do?

When on the topic of the performance management process during an interview, noted organizational development guru Edward Lawler stated, “every organization I’m aware of has trouble doing [performance appraisals] well and effectively.” He takes it a step further in his book, Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage, where he suggests for performance management to be effective, 4 things need to be accomplished:

It needs to define and produce agreement on what type of performance is needed.

It needs to guide the development of individuals so that they have the skills and knowledge needed to perform effectively.

It needs to motivate individuals to perform effectively.

It needs to provide data to the organization’s human capital information system.

I’ll take it a few steps further.

Performance management needs to become:

A daily leadership action, armed by coaching and development attributes.

A model in which constructive feedback is applied as often as necessary.

A system that provides both formal and informal recognition for a job well done (or when things go awry, we should recognize what the employee learned through the process).

Linked to career — and dare I say purpose — ambitions.

Devoid of stack ranking.

Failing any imminent changes to an excessively flawed system, may we yearn for a time when performance management processes and practices have to be updated because the robots made us do it.

]]>The timestamp on this post is February 13, 2015, 10am Pacific Time.

Lucky, ‘Friday the 13th’.

Perhaps it is.

At this precise moment in time, I’m ‘under the knife’. I’m hoping it’s a rust-proof knife, because the last thing I need now is tetanus. I’m also trusting the doctor is old and wise enough to ably perform the surgery that is necessary on one of my two remaining eyes.

Right now somewhere on Vancouver Island, a doctor is cutting into my right eye because I’m the benefactor of a nasty gremlin who decided to set up camp on my right eyelid for the past two months. The nasty bugger didn’t even offer marshmallows or beer. It reminds me of the Ukraine.

Yes, I am the graceful host to what is commonly referred to as an “eye stye” (more formally a hordeolum) which is really an abscess on the eyelid caused by a staphylococcus bacteria eye infection. I suppose I need better eye hygiene.

My friend decided to pay a visit on Wednesday, December 10. When returning from a nutty travel schedule where I visited five cities in three days, as I landed at the final destination (home) I felt this powerful and painful form of acne surface on my eyelid. By Friday we had a full-scale panic on our hands in the homestead, so I visited a walk-in clinic. We were heading to Maui for a Xmas holiday the next day, and I didn’t want my friend to cramp my over zealous surfing ambitions.

“Oh, that’s gross,” shrieked the doctor.

Not the best start, I thought to myself. We pressed on.

“Well, there’s not much I can do for that,” she continued.

I pulled out my phone right in front of her – disobeying the signs on the wall – and immediately headed for WebMD.com.

Apparently there really isn’t much you can do, other than hot compresses, keeping it clean, and doing some sort of “burst the eye stye” dance which I never mastered. I swear it stated to drink more scotch somewhere on the site, so I headed for the liquor store.

By the time we were in Maui, the swelling had subsided somewhat, but the stye never fully went away. My friend remained the same size for the next three weeks — we celebrated New Year’s Eve together — and then all Hell broke loose.

By this point in time, the stye deserved a name. I chose Putin. After all, this was the Eastern region of my body and it had no business being there.

So, Putin and I went back to the doctor’s and pleaded for mercy. Putin was getting larger (and feistier) and I really needed him to return to Russia, or wherever he came from.

The doctor arrived in the room.

“Oh, that’s gross,” shrieked the doctor.

Where have I heard this before, I thought to myself.

“Well, there’s not much I can do for that,” he continued.

Screw you Putin!

But, alas, there was some welcome respite on the horizon. A referral was forthcoming, to another doctor, who specializes in repatriation exercises of the eyelids. (technically, I believe they are called ophthalmologists) So I left the second doctor’s office (still with Putin) but with a skip in my step as I was happy to know an annexation was about to happen.

Two weeks passed, and no call.

Were there no ophthalmologists on Vancouver Island? Did I need to dust off my Morse Code apparatus or perhaps the Fax machine to communicate with this all-mighty healer?

Magically, the phone rang.

“Hello, it’s Dan … and Putin,” I said.

“Ummm, hi, it’s Doctor Merkel’s office from Germany, we’d like to offer you an appointment on February 13, 2015 at 10am for surgery,” replied the rather transactional voice on the other end.

“Yes, Putin and I are free, we’ll be there,” I responded with a palpable sense of dejection.

Click.

I didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye to that voice on the other end of the phone. She was probably onto another call. Maybe it was someone from ISIS.

So, fast-forward to today — February 13 — where I have been living with a stigma for the better part of two months. It’s been painful, and embarrassing at times, and annoying, and consuming.

What have I learned?

Generally, people don’t want to look you in the eye when your eye is about to explode liters of pus onto the floor, or their sandwich.

When you are proactive and say something like, “Sorry for the way my eye looks,” people lie through their teeth with the usual remark being, “I can hardly notice it.” It’s nice, but they’re lying.

Putin is evil.

Placing circular tea bags on your eye are far better than square tea bags, when seeking comfort or respite for a minute or two. I recommend camomile, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Oh, and don’t forget to boil the water – a dry tea bag does nothing. (literally, nothing)

I’ve had to come to grips with my vanity. I like dressing up, and going out, and being on stage to speak, and working with clients and team members, and answering the door … but Putin put a damper on my normally jovial spirits.

But then I really came to grips with my vanity. Who cares? There are so many individuals on this planet who have it worse than I do — particularly in terms of physical deformities or abnormalities — that I am actually glad Putin paid a visit. It made me appreciate my life more than ever, and it put into perspective some things I was taking granted for.

Was Putin painful?

Yes.

But did Putin help me in my quest to continue growing as a person.

Indeed.

Stigma no more.

UPDATE: the surgery was going to be more complicated than anticipated, so it now has to be performed at a hospital (versus a clinic) and my new date is February 18th. Putin lives.

“Compassion leaves an indelible blueprint of the recognition that life so sorely needs between one individual and another; one nation and another; one culture and another. It is also valid for the road which our spirit should be building now for crossing the historical abyss that still separates us from a truly contemporary vision of life, and the increase of life and meaning that awaits us in the future.”

– Laurens van der Post

This is the final post in a three-part series that aims to define new and improved leadership attributes using a tree as a metaphor. Recall the roots of a tree were the “becoming” leadership attributes and the trunk of the tree were the “being” leadership attributes. This final post outlines the real beauty of a tree – the branches and foliage – as the “going beyond” leadership attributes.

A leader capable of demonstrating the three components to a tree is one that is proficient not only in terms of inclusion (becoming) and open execution (being), but one that is magnanimous and panoptic. Simply put, this final stage to the metaphor ensures a leader is seeing the big picture in his or her team. The leader is looking out for the goals and objectives both for today, and the future. It is the ability to nurture the team to greater heights coupled by an acknowledgment that we grow through the development of one another.

It is the branches and foliage of General Sherman (our tree hero example) that creates the beauty of our metaphor. By moving beyond, the leader shifts to a third level that drives the entire team and/or organization to incredible new heights. It is the sense of green and foliage that creates a leader who is much more than a tactical leader for they are truly a leader of humanity. This “going beyond” leader is a navigator of the human condition.

The five attributes that I believe make up the “going beyond” leadership attributes are as follows:

Coaching

Measuring

Adapting

Exploring

Bettering

Coaching

Coaching is an ongoing informal conversation with the employee that focuses on providing the following:

counsel on current objectives and actions to categorically improve the result;

feedback concerning their progress or improvements on Flat Army habits; and

advice on personal and/or career advancement or opportunities.

In summary, to demonstrate the attribute of coaching is to assist your team member — and to help them improve — with issues going on at work, on the personal development front and with respect to career development. That’s it! It’s an ongoing and informal discussion with your team members, albeit individually, to help them get better. The problem is too many human resources professionals, consulting shops and accrediting institutions have whipped organizations into a frenzy just by the mention of coaching. We must demystify the term in order to bring some sanity back into the definition of leadership and to the definition of coaching.

Measuring

Leaders are wise to begin measuring their various actions (personal, team, unit, organization) if they want to go beyond a standard level of leadership. It’s not simply about quantity but also of quality. But how? Financial and other quantitative measures are pervasive in today’s organizations. That’s not a bad thing. But, we must add another component to the attribute of measuring, and that is to ensure qualitative measurement is on an equal footing with quantitative business metrics. To measure is to take into consideration the soul of the employee. Measuring is not new, but the equal weighting of both quantitative business metrics and qualitative humanistic metrics might be for leaders to go beyond. In describing the African humanist philosophy known as Ubuntu — a philosophy focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other — Nelson Mandela said: “[Ubuntu is] the profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievements of others.” If only we could measure it.

Some questions to consider include:

Are people in your organization working more collaboratively together, communicating more efficiently and feeling as though more cooperation is happening?

Are your employees satisfied with senior leadership, company direction and strategy, corporate social responsibility and community efforts?

Are team members being asked about concepts like life-work balance, career development opportunities, their feelings on the state of compensation, work processes or organizational learning opportunities?

Exploring

Exploring is the ability of an individual to deviate from the norm, to look outside the box, and to play devil’s advocate in any given situation. It’s to be a well-rounded leader, thinker and person. Exploring encourages leaders to be a contrarian. If looking at situations or problems the same way, time and time again, you’re simply not exploring the options from different angles well enough to make a discernible difference for anyone.

Henry Mintzberg uses the expression “Worldly Mindset” to depict a leader who takes advantage of external environments to further one’s leadership competence. He writes:

Should we not, therefore, be encouraging our managers to become more worldly, defined earlier as experienced in life, in both a sophisticated and practical way?

Leadership (and going beyond) is about exploring with the employee what’s going on in his or her role, in an effort to help both sides of the newly formed relationship. By exploring, you are imparting your wisdom, understanding and insight with respect to your role and how it impacts their role. And conversely, you are there to explore the intricacies of their role so as to learn and bring back that value to your own role and responsibilities. It’s a way in which to break down the organizational silos while simultaneously building culture, engagement and competence.

Adapting

What is evident in the business world is steadfastly simple to some and eerily overlooked by others. A failure to adapt, to anticipate or to possess continual flexibility in previous decisions will be the unnerving undoing of an organization. The company formerly known as Research in Motion (RIM) and makers of the Blackberry smart phone line is a classic example. Former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis were innovation machines, producing technology products that were snapped up in droves by their customers. But an unwillingness to adapt or to look ahead and predict what was going to happen in the smart phone market ultimately led to their resignations in early 2012. The company is currently trying to pull off a corporate rescue for the ages. It’s a rather desperate quest of adapting, but only time will tell if it’s too late.

How does a leader better adapt?

The future happens every day, get used to it: leaders need to be continually uncomfortable with the status quo.

No road is ever smooth: anticipate bumps and barriers so others can succeed in changing business conditions.

Uncertainty is not a negative: explore options, dig into possibilities, get creative and be relentless to improve.

Do not stay on the white line: shift priorities or approaches to address needs of today and the future.

Perfection is not the goal: adapting to change and progressing forward is how to be perfect.

Others don’t own the future: be accountable to yourself. No one will adapt for you.

The words of Alexander Graham Bell nicely summarize the adapting attribute for a leader aiming to go beyond: “When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

Bettering

In the 2012 Democratic National Convention held in Charlotte, North Carolina, First Lady Michelle Obamagave a speech, some argue, for the ages. It painted her husband, President Barack Obama not as the President of the United States, but as a true leader of the people. She depicted a graceful, loving and empathetic man who clearly possessed the entire suite of attributes we have been describing in our tree metaphor: becoming, being and beyond. One line in particular stuck out for me:

“Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.”

We might take some creative license with her words and suggest the attribute of bettering in our framework is as follows:

“Success isn’t about how many direct reports you have; it’s about how well you are bettering your team and the organization whatever the situation.”

Who cares how big your team is or your organizational girth. The goal is not a larger team, it is making that team — whatever the size — the best it can be. It is the leaders responsibility to assist team members to hit their professional or career pursuits. And the truly connected leader will take interest and provide counsel on personal endeavours as well as we discussed in the coaching attribute. Likewise, it is incumbent upon connected leaders to refrain from invoking a culture of status quo. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, said, “Good is the enemy of great,” and it is this phrase leaders should tattoo onto their foreheads. Bettering is improving. This is the essence of moving beyond status quo leadership.

In summary, and to conclude this 3-post exploration, I truly believe that to be a better leader, one ought to look at a tree and think of the three main parts as key levels of leadership:

]]>Employee engagement research recently surfaced by Answers – a company that empowers consumers, brands and organizations by connecting them with the information they need to make better informed decisions – suggests only 27% of employees are engaged at work, whereas 45% of employees find themselves in the middle of the pack of engagement. Not surprisingly, 28% of the employee population is not engaged at all. This particular data point isn’t new, per se, as other firms have very similar data points.

What’s more interesting has to do with the additional insight depicted from the 4,115 American employees who were queried on their work experiences. From the interviews and surveys that researchers at Answers conducted, results suggest the top three drivers of employee engagement are:

Leadership

Job

Supervisor

Furthermore, employees yearn for “company leadership that supports long-term growth over short-terms gains and that can provide a clear vision of the company’s direction.” Timely feedback, recognition for a job well done, feeling included, understanding how their role contributed to the overall success of the organization and providing a general sense of accomplishment at work were also factors that contributed to highly engaged employees.

If it were easy to achieve, every organization would be highly engaged, but that’s not happening, is it.

How can leadership and the supervisor enact and perhaps revitalize the workforce such that everyone’s ‘job’ feels more like their ‘purpose’?

Let’s turn our attention (again) to the ‘Giant Sequoias’ …one of nature’s finest gifts, for a metaphor that just might help. In terms of volume, they are the world’s largest trees and the biggest is none other than 2,300 year-old-ish General Sherman, a tree weighing over 5,400 metric tons, spanning 83 meters in height and 1,486 m³ in volume. Its roots reach out some 60 meters influencing roughly four square acres of the Sierra Nevada, California land it inhabits in beautiful Sequoia National Park.

As we discussed in last week’s Forbes column, “The Roots of Becoming a More Effective Leader,” many of us could learn a lesson from our friend General Sherman. In fact, leaders of any stripe might try to emulate this magnificent natural spectacle, analogously of course.

To become such a giving tree, full of life and strength, General Sherman is made up of three key elements:

Roots (becoming attributes)

Trunk (being attributes)

Branches and foliage (going beyond attributes)

Let’s investigate the true strength of the tree; the trunk.

The trunk provides the power in which to cast both depth and breadth of a tree’s span, to equally achieve success and beauty. Like General Sherman, the core of the tree provides the nutrients and foundation that helps one to grow and to reach new heights. Without it, stunted growth is assured and a mediocre if not futile leadership example will manifest.

The leadership trunk – otherwise known as the ‘being’ leadership attributes – are the 5 leadership behaviours that ensure the leader can effectively work with the team to accomplish goals in a manner that is precise, yet coupled by collective participation. It’s a way in which the leader can also create a fun and creative environment in which to operate. It is through the long and strong tree body of our General Sherman analogy where leaders help their people (and themselves) turn ideas into action. It’s the trunk that might bridge the gap that surfaced from the Answers research between leadership, job and the supervisor.

It is the ability to help employees execute on the chosen path, and it comes with a responsibility to ensure the leader continues to be open and harmonious yet capable of getting things done. It is being able to execute on given and/or agreed upon actions, but doing so in a manner that is participative yet not wasting anyone’s time.

The five behaviors and attributes I believe that make up the trunk of the tree (the being attributes) are as follows:

Analyzing

Deciding

Delivering

Cooperating

Bantering

Each of the five attributes that make up the trunk of the tree can be further defined as follows:

Analysis: Leadership is about being able to analyze situations, not only in terms of profit and loss or goals and objectives, but in terms of the human condition. A leader who is conscious of their team culture and levels of engagement is one who analyzes situations with their people in mind. Analyzing is to observe the pro’s and con’s of various situations before actually making decisions. But it is with grave cultural danger when the leader analyzes situations when only profit, loss, deadlines or self-fulfilling promotion are the outcomes. It is deleterious to the health of a team or organization to do so otherwise. President Obama in his famous “I’m going to sleep on it” remark regarding the potential killing of Osama bin Laden may have been mocked by some for taking 16 hours to give the operation a thumbs-up, but he in fact was continuing the analysis of facts and data in order to make the right decision for the health of all those involved.

Deciding: The Latin root of the word “decision” — cis — literally means to cut. Seems simple enough, but leaders shouldn’t think of the act of ‘cutting’ as a negative term. Deciding is a process rather than a one-time action. By defining it as a process we take away the illogical thinking it’s an absolute. Deciding (or cutting) as a process is really about ‘being’ a more effective leader while including others. Those leaders who utilize the deciding attribute as a basis to collaborate with their team and the organization are indeed engaging with employees. Deciding, as a process and in the context of a team or organization, should involve others. Deciding is not about consensus but it is about inclusion. Deciding is a verb not a past tense. Leaders should shift the focus from the weight of making a decision themselves to involving others in the process. If so, it opens the lines of communication and breaks down some of the entrenched disengagement issues of employees. John Yap – Parliamentary Secretary for the Government of British Columbia – made decisions to update the antiquated liquor laws of the province not by unilaterally making decisions, but involving the entire province in the discussion.

“My vision for Virgin has never been rigid and changes constantly, like the company itself. I have always lived my life by making lists: lists of people to call, lists of ideas, lists of companies to set up, lists of people who can make things happen. Each day I work through these lists, and it is that sequence of calls that propels me forward.”

Doesn’t that sound to you like a leader who is delivering? It’s a leader who knows all too well that in order to achieve strategic growth and business results, specific order is required but it’s coupled with an eye towards the human condition. It’s no wonder he is personally worth over $4 billion and revenues earned at Virgin Group come in at over $20 billion, but the organization and Branson never forget societal contributions either. To deliver, a leader will use SMART objectives to ensure clarity, adjust as necessary and remain malleable, address issues as soon as possible, build in proper resource management processes, ensure roles & responsibilities of the team are clearly articulated and inspire and fete the team throughout delivery of the action or project.

“… the energy of the cooperative mindset comes not from a mindset of competition but rather from a mindset of excellence. The focus is on the excellence toward which people are striving together rather than the competition of beating everyone else to the goal.”

A leader may work tirelessly in the ‘being’ level of our tree metaphor to analyze, decide and deliver … but if it’s being done in a competitive atmosphere – if the team feels as though it’s being less than cooperative – it is unlikely to produce the results long-term that we are seeking. It may stall a leader’s efforts to improve employee engagement which will ultimately stall levels of productivity and business improvements. Cooperating – it is ‘to work with’. As you work with your team, as you create a community amongst the team, you are bound to achieve excellence.

Bantering: One of the fourteen characteristics Etienne Wenger suggests that makes up a true community of practice is “local lore, shared stories, inside jokes, knowing laughter”. Several researchers – including Sigmund Freud himself – have also emphasized the function of humour in the organization as a relief trait. They suggest humour offers a safe release for feelings at work which ultimately prevent anti-social behavior while fostering organizational harmony. Bill Gibson was the Chief Operating Officer at Crystal Decisions, a company eventually bought by Business Objects. Throughout his tenure Bill knew the importance of banter. During the Sales Kick-off Conference in 2002, Bill spent most of the time in a boxer’s outfit playing on the tag-line of “We’re going to knock the BO out of BO”; Business Objects being a competitor to Crystal Decisions at the time. Throughout the office, Bill was known to kid around with anyone that he came into contact with. He knew what it meant to get down to business, but through his humour and down-to-earth humble and clowning around attitude, Bill was a legend. People wanted to be around him; people would go the extra mile because he made things fun. Bill knew the link between people and emotional intelligence. As COO, he didn’t have to employ such an attitude, but everyone throughout the organization wanted to be a part of his environment. To banter is to be human, but it can also help achieve business results in a more hospitable, and engaging manner.

In summary,being a more effective leader is having the ability to drive results while inspiring and motivating employees to act as one. The ‘being’ attributes (the trunk of a tree) build off the ‘becoming’ attributes (the roots of a tree) to achieve those desired results … while engaging the workforce.

“Execution is the great unaddressed issue in the business world today. Its absence is the single biggest obstacle to success and the cause of most of the disappointments that are mistakenly attributed to other causes.”

I agree, however, it’s through the attributes of analyzing, deciding, delivering, cooperating and bantering where the leader is ‘being’ more effective at execution and engaging.

]]>If I had my way, any face-to-face leadership development program on the planet would first start with the facilitator showing a picture of General Sherman.

No, not General William Tecumseh Sherman – military strategist and General of the Union Army during the United States Civil War in 1861 through 1865 – rather the giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) tree located in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park in Tulare County, California.

General Sherman (the tree) is a perfect metaphor for the three key levels of leadership I believe need to be considered for today’s leaders who occupy the management ranks. We’ll return to this metaphor in a minute.

But first, let’s look at a few data points. The Conference Board and Development Dimensions International (DDI) recently released their Global Leadership Forecast 2014/2015 and as usual, there are a several nuggets that suggest we’ve still got a long way to go as it relates to improved leadership in our organizations.

Of the more than 13,000 business leaders who were surveyed across the globe, only 27 percent indicated they felt “very prepared” to tackle what they collectively believed to be the number one issue today: human capital challenges.

Interestingly, when those business leaders were asked how they intend to improve the human capital challenges that were in their midst, four of the top ten strategies focused on leadership including:

Improve leadership development programs;

Enhance the effectiveness of senior management teams;

Improve the effectiveness of frontline supervisors and managers; and

Improve succession planning.

As the folks from The Conference Board and DDI wrote, “CEOs know their organizations cannot retain highly engaged, high-performing employees without effective leaders who can manage, coach, develop, and inspire their multigenerational, globally dispersed, and tech-savvy teams.”

But the research gets even better. When the business leaders were asked to “identify the leadership attributes and behaviors most critical to success as a leader,” there were five that become most prominent across all global regions. Those five attributes and behaviors were:

Retaining and developing talent;

Managing complexity;

Leading change;

Leading with integrity;

Having an entrepreneurial mind-set.

To summarize the research, only a quarter of all leaders feel they’re capable of tackling the most pressing issue in today’s organizations … people. Not only is that alarming, those same leaders agree there is a significant amount of leadership development to be had if their number one concern is ever to be addressed. It’s not as though some innate dose of magic is going to suddenly appear turning ineffective leaders into superstars. As Warren Bennis once wrote, “The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.”

Now, let’s return to the metaphor of General Sherman, and for that matter any tree.

What if a leadership model – and specifically the leadership behaviors and attributes that make up an engaged, effective and transparent leader – were to use the makeup of a tree as the basis for leadership itself? What if the three main components of a tree were to be used to help address the concerns that leaders surfaced in The Conference Board and DDI research?

The three key parts to any tree are:

The roots

Trunk

Branches & foliage

I truly believe the aforementioned three parts of a tree can help us demarcate and define leadership attributes that address both the employee engagement crisis that dogs organizations AND the issues as outlined by The Conference Board and DDI from above. The roots are the ‘becoming’ attributes, the trunk can be thought of as the ‘being’ attributes, and the branches and foliage are the ‘going beyond’ attributes.

The alignment to leadership attributes and behaviors looks like this:

The roots (becoming attributes)

Trunk (being attributes)

Branches & foliage (going beyond attributes)

Let’s first dig a little deeper into the ground and investigate the roots of the tree, the ‘becoming’ attributes. The roots ensure stability, growth and harmony in the forest. The roots act as the nutrient system for the trunk as well as for the branches and foliage. From a leadership perspective, without the roots there is no chance for growth, innovation, productivity or improved results. Without the roots there would be no tree. The becoming attributes are behaviors that set the tone for leaders to behave like an engaged and connected leader, in touch with the employees, organization, customers and community.

Think of A.G. Lafley, CEO and President at Proctor & Gamble. He has instilled a leadership behavior ethos at P&G that ensures the roots feed the rest of the ecosystem. For example, in his book, The Game Changer: How Every Leader Can Drive Everyday Innovation, he writes, “the willingness of all people at P&G is to be psychologically open and to seriously consider new ideas, whatever the source, thus building a truly open, truly global innovation network that can link up—and be first in line—with the most interesting thinkers and the best products to “reapply with pride.” Far too many leaders (and the accompanying leadership attributes and behaviors) immediately jump to the executing stage or the ‘do more with less’ mantra. It’s this sort of short-termism thinking – time and time again – that prevents the leaves from ever blossoming on a tree.

The ‘becoming’ attributes should be implemented in your organization before leaders can even begin thinking about tackling the key issues identified in The Conference Board and DDI research. They are non-negotiable yet harmonious attributes that ensure a top-down, command-and-control leadership style isn’t utilized as the default way in which to lead. (Which is often the case in today’s hierarchically driven organizations)

The five behaviors and attributes I believe that make up the roots of the tree (the becoming attributes) are as follows:

Trusting

Involving

Empathizing

Developing

Communicating

Each of the five attributes that make up the roots of the tree can be further defined as follows:

Trusting: Whether a bouquet or a brickbat, whether a high or a low, whether a peak or a valley, whether a success or a mistake, the leader must create an environment that ensures all members of the team (direct or indirect) feel safe not just to do their jobs, but also to break free of them. The members must feel as though they can trust their leader to discuss any part of any process or scenario. The leader must portray herself such that anyone can approach her to ask a question no matter the time and no matter the problem. The act of trusting is table stakes for any leader.

Involving: If a situation arises where leaders need to involve employees in a decision or a discussion or a deliberation, and the default behavior of the employee is to avoid eye contact, pretend they’re not paying attention, lie about their level of busyness or flat out ignore the request, what does that say about the state of leadership within the organization? To involve is to be inclusive and invite others into a part (or all of) the process leading up to and including action. In the organization, involving is calculated social inclusion. Jack Welch his “breakfast with Jack” opportunities and they were legendary across General Electric as it provided both the employees and Jack an opportunity to learn from one another. That is the attribute of involving perfectly defined.

Empathizing: If as a leader you have the capacity to put yourself in the shoes of others and understand what those individuals are going through in any given situation, you are exhibiting empathy. Sadly, this one of the five becoming attributes is often the most overlooked, misunderstood and little used. If more leaders were to empathize with their team members, the workplace would be a much happier place. In 2007, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) published a report analyzing data from 6,371 managers in thirty-eight countries. CCL finds that “empathy is positively related to job performance. Managers who show more empathy toward direct reports are viewed as better performers in their job by their bosses.”

Developing: In a study conducted by IBM in 2010 with 700 global chief human resource officers (CHROs), researchers find the single most critical issue facing organizations in the future is their ability to develop future leaders. At its core, the developing connected leadership attribute is about recognizing the talent that exists within your team. What are the strengths in your individuals and your team? It is also the ability to assess the talent delta gap in individuals and the team, to ensure you are proactively plugging the capability holes. How you as a leader are successfully adjudicating your talent level and taking the necessary steps to develop your people is a critical piece. To be a developing leader, one must be thinking continuously about opportunities for improving the team in whatever shape or form.

Communicating: To be a communicating leader, we should remind ourselves of Gene Kranz the flight commander at NASA for decades until his eventual retirement in 1994. He was smart enough to listen, to display compassion and to emote while being brash enough to persuade, to be clear and to clarify. Too many leadership books predicate the behavior of communicating on being open, transparent, clear and consistent. While these traits are critically important when being communicative, a leader must also be persuasive, emotional, direct and a true listener. Throughout those decades at NASA, Kranz utilized a style that was both blunt and compassionate. He serves as an excellent example of a leader who fully understood the attribute of communicating.

The becoming attributes drive relationship building and understanding between a leader and her team, regardless of its size. The becoming attributes provide the nutrients and foundation that help one to grow and to reach new heights, like General Sherman. Without these, stunted growth is assured and a mediocre, if not futile, leadership model manifests. Becoming attributes are the installation of humanity into a leader and a collaborative spirit across the organization.

Let’s hope facilitators in leadership development programs start showing a picture of General Sherman on the morning of Day One, acting as a metaphor for improved leadership attributes and behavior. Let’s also hope the C-Suite begins recognizing leadership can be thought of as a tree. If a leader is ‘becoming’, ‘being’ and ‘going beyond’ I’ve no doubt the numbers surfaced by The Conference Board and Development Dimensions International will steadily increase.

]]>I’m from Canada and although I’ve never played hockey, there is a colloquial expression in my country known as a “puck hog”.

No, it’s doesn’t have anything to do with pig farming and it’s also not some new form of Canadian doughnut, but it illustrates the collateral damage of a selfish leader rather well.

A puck hog is a player on a hockey team who holds onto the puck for far too long looking to score from anywhere on the ice or is so delusional about his abilities that he believes he can win the game without ever passing the puck to teammates. The same phrase is used in basketball, but replace puck with ball to get “ball hog”.

Do you know any puck or ball hog leaders in business or government or your place of work?

You know, those individuals who only look out for themselves without really caring about employees or society in general? These are the types of individuals who like to dominate, sometimes for the sport of domination itself.

Here’s some irony to think about it. What if those puck and ball hogs acted the way they did in our organizations because that’s all they have ever been conditioned to behave like? What if they don’t know how to pass? What if they had no idea there was a greater purpose than simply winning?

What if they thought the purpose of an organization was to dominate without thinking twice about the societal consequences from their actions?

Perhaps we should unassumingly blame the followers. Otherwise known as employees —individuals being led by a leader — it just may be those people making up roughly 90 percent of an organization’s population that cause this selfish sort of leadership puck hog behaviour. For example, researchers found what can only be described as an alarming trend with the employee base when they discovered employees would rather be led by someone who scores high on the “dominance” scale versus the “prestige” scale. Put another way, employees are attracted to leaders who care more about (and exert) power as opposed to purpose. Thankfully, if the organization is philanthropic in nature or in a non-competitive environment, the “prestige” leader is preferred, but when it comes to winning, (i.e. competitive situations) the merciless, power-hungry leader is the more partial choice of employees.Our organizations remain anemically disengaged (or not engaged) — according to firms such as Gallup, AON Hewitt and BlessingWhite — yet it seems employees would rather have their leadership team be made up of the “dominant” style, leaders who make Pol Pot and Ivan the Terrible seem friendly. This isn’t simply ironical, it’s just wrong. Nobody really likes a puck hog at work, do they?

Of course not all leaders are selfish either. It’s not as though every leader aspires to dominate like the Serengeti Lion of the Vumbi Pride does in Africa. Thankfully there are other leadership styles.

For example, Daniel Goleman indicated in 2000 there are six different leadership styles a leader might use, but as he writes, “only four of the six consistently have a positive effect on climate and results.” As you might deduce from their descriptors, the coercive and authoritative styles are not as beneficial or positive as the affiliative, democratic, pacesetting or coaching styles he outlined.

Not to be outdone, researchers Gary Williams and Robert Miller proved more than a decade ago in Harvard Business Review that there are in fact five different types of leadership styles. They found leaders to be classified as charismatics, followers, skeptics, controllers or thinkers indicating, however, that “each style can be highly effective in certain environments.”

The onset of defining leadership styles for the masses might have come from Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard when they created the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership model in the late 1960’s. Their four-tier model – selling, telling, participating and delegating – can still be found in corporate training seminars across the globe, but it is often proven by academics to be a flawed if not inconsistent model.

A few years ago, I was being somewhat cheeky and put together my own leadership style model, dubbing it the “Leadership Tonic Scale” where the levels of moronic, ironic, platonic, iconic and harmonic can be found.

But it’s the selfish leader – those choosing to lead with a perilous fixation on power, pay and/or profit – that might be causing much of the disengagement and dissatisfaction in today’s organization. It just may be this type of leadership style that has caused US middle class net worth to drop to mid-1960’s levels when (shockingly) adjusted to 2013 dollars. This is not a good thing.

It’s precisely why I’m on a personal mission to make 2015 (and beyond) the point at which we reintroduce purpose into the organization … and leadership in general.Far too many employees are being duped into thinking the puck hog (and thus the selfish leader) is the manner in which leadership is supposed to manifest. Leaders ultimately have two actions to take. First, a refined definition that outlines a new ‘purpose of the organization’ is required. Second, leaders also need to redefine what it means to be both an employee and a leader in this new ‘purposeful organization’. I suppose that’s three actions, but work with me.

Many employees have been conditioned to believe the purpose of an organization is to fuel the needs of senior leaders in the leaders’ quest for “dominance”. That dominance often comes in the form of maximizing shareholder value (particularly in for-profit, publicly traded organizations, explained eloquently in Forbes by Steve Denning) and in the form of increased power and control, be it within for-profit or public sector organizations. (Think bureaucracy, shutdowns and partisan policymaking.) This is ball hogging at its finest.

In its simplest form, we need to dial back the “dominance” and increase the level of “prestige” in leadership.

We need to balance ‘purpose with power’ while introducing an elegant dose of ‘management with meaning’.

Arguably, we needn’t look any further for an example of purpose in the organization – and in their leadership style – than Etsy.

Founded in 2005 by Robert Kalin, Chris Maguire, and Haim Schoppik, Etsy is a very successful online marketplace for artisans and others to sell unique goods to citizens of the world. This past Christmas, I used Etsy to purchase a Bicycle Wheel Clock for my sister and brother-in-law from a wonderful artist in Oregon. There are over 40 million Etsy members and over 1 million active Etsy shops in 200 countries. In 2013, their sellers grossed more than $1.35 billion in sales and although the numbers aren’t in yet, 2014 revenues have no doubt exceeded 2013. What makes Etsy so special, however, (aside from being a registered B Corp) comes from their self-described mission:

Etsy’s mission is to reimagine commerce in ways that build a more fulfilling and lasting world. We are building a human, authentic and community-centric global and local marketplace. We are committed to using the power of business to create a better world through our platform, our members, our employees and the communities we serve. As we grow, commitment to our mission remains at the core of our identity. It is woven into the decisions we make for the long-term health of our ecosystem, from the sourcing of our office supplies to our employee benefits to the items sold in our marketplace.

One might argue that all senior leaders in today’s organizations need to “reimagine commerce in ways that build a more fulfilling and lasting world.” One might argue that the definition of leadership — shifting from dominance to prestige and from puck hogging to puck sharing — is how we might indeed redefine a new “purpose of the organization”.

As leaders and organizations remain selfish, the collateral damage affects employees, customers, partners and society in general. Etsy and its leadership team knew from the very inception date of their company a decade ago in 2005 that the organization they were building would be true and purposeful to all stakeholders, not simply profit seekers. They didn’t become an organization (or a founding leadership team) that put profit or power before purpose. On the contrary, profit and power became balanced with purpose. The collateral damage at Etsy is non-existent, and millions of stakeholders have benefitted. (And my sister and brother-in-law have a fabulous new Christmas gift clock.)

In his book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, published in 1999, Peter Drucker issued a warning signal for leaders looking to build a more innovative and purpose-driven organization. Drucker wrote:

“We will have to redefine the purpose of the employing organization and of its management as both, satisfying the legal owners, such as shareholders, and satisfying the owners of the human capital that gives the organization its wealth-producing power, that is, satisfying the knowledge workers. For increasingly the ability of organizations — and not only of businesses — to survive will come to depend on their ‘comparative advantage’ in making the knowledge worker productive. And the ability to attract and hold the best of the knowledge workers is the first and most fundamental precondition.” (Peter Drucker. Management for the 21st Century. HarperCollins. 1999.)

At the risk of attempting to outdo several literary and leadership giants like Drucker — and as a soft introduction to my next book, releasing soon — I define the new purpose of an organization as follows:

“The purpose of an organization is to delight its customers through engaged and empowered employees, acting ethically within society to deliver just profitability that benefits all stakeholders including the community, workers and owners.”

I’d like to see more Etsy-like organizations in 2015 and beyond. I’d like to see more organizations utilize this new “purpose of the organization” definition from above to balance dominance with prestige, purpose with power and management with meaning.

I believe it’s time we create a new organizational purpose and an improved definition of what it means to be both an employee and a leader for the stakeholders we serve.

After all, it was Peter Drucker who once wrote, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

Conation is one of those words and it just so happens to be my Word of 2015.

Back in the 18th century, German academics began classifying the ‘self’ — to be specific, the ‘mind’ — into what is known as the tripartite classification of mental activities.

Ok maybe now we know why some words lose their luster.

In the 19th century, American and British psychologists took the classification and began utilizing it in their own research, as well as with their patient work. They improved the original work and further honed the tripartite.

The three bits to the classification include cognition, affection, and conation. (Editor’s Note: even as I type conation, swirly red lines can be found underneath the word be it on a Mac or a PC, so even the ‘machine’ has no idea what it means.)

Cognition, as you know, deals with the “what“. It’s when we interpret, process and understand the gazillion number of data points and information strands that enter our mind each day.

Affection is more about the “how“. Think of it as whether you like someone (or something) or perhaps you don’t. Affection is whether you are attached to an idea, issue, person … or you’re not. (E.g. I possess a love affection for Denise)

But conation … the alleged ugly stepchild to the tripartite (it a candidate for Word of the Year in 2016) is arguably a word Simon Sinek might enjoy. It’s about the “why“. Conation comes from the Latin ‘conatus‘ or ‘conationem‘ and is defined as “any natural tendency, impulse, or directed effort.”

“the mental faculty of purpose, desire, or will to perform an action; volition.”

At its core, conation is rather brilliant. It has the capability of taking the knowledge, data and ideas you interpret and process (cognition) and blend it with your emotions, likes and dislikes (affection) into behaviour, purpose and action. In my mind, conation is the missing link in today’s organization as we seek a better balance with power, profit and purpose.

Conation is an aspect of human behavior that motivates leaders to independently seek out and create a better society.

The societal data is everywhere. (what and cognition)

I believe the will of the human spirit to do ‘good’ remains pervasive. (how and affection)

What’s missing? If our organizations — and leadership in general — is to shift away from a fixation on profit and power while improving society, employee engagement and our communities, perhaps it’s conation that’s now required. (why and action)

Some argue that conation “has been a neglected dimension of behavior in neuropsychological assessment” and that it just may be “the missing link between cognitive ability and prediction of performance capabilities in everyday life.”

I believe it’s one of the missing elements of leadership, and thus the true definition of purpose in the organization. It is through this dogged action — volition, perhaps — where we might once and for all improve work, life and society together.

Conation is my word of the year for 2015.

It’s time for us all to become conative.

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit. Bernard Williams

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]]>Like thousands of other webizens, I took to Twitter on the evening of November 24, 2014.

I did so to understand how Ferguson, Missouri was handling a grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Brown, the man behind the gun that killed Michael Brown on August 9, 2014.

Mike Costa is the General Manager of “Chattanooga’s Number One TV Station” and — or so it seems — the brains and brawn behind its Twitter account.

Things began going south rather quickly with Mr. Costa when — as his main network cut into his station’s normal programming — he decided to tweet the following:

On one hand, perhaps Mike thought he was providing a good deed to the 28,000 Twitter followers of WTVC NewsChannel 9.

On the other hand, it’s a rather good argument of depicting everything that is wrong with society today. It’s not only insensitive, it’s inane.

I mean, “Dancing with the Stars?”

Really?

And you had to use the #Ferguson hashtag, right?

Things got progressively worse. It was as if Mr. Costa was Bambi and Twitter was Godzilla … not dissimilar to that 1969 classic movie, Bambi Meets Godzilla.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t end well for Bambi.

Mike decided to take down the ill-advised original tweet, and then proceeded to tell everyone about it.

Alright Mike, apology accepted (well done, actually) … but did you have to tweet, “to stop the bad signal from spreading?” This isn’t H1N1 or the Measles. It’s just a tweet. A bad tweet, but just a tweet.

Next up, Mike decided to start engaging people. One of the best was his exchange with @lovesickglee, where he pleads his innocence. Sure, you may have had some unruly customers and were trying to be proactive, but rule number one when it comes to anything on social media is to “think before you type”. (In all fairness, Mike did use the word “lunkheaded” in this tweet, so I forgave him for a nanosecond.)

When Twitter user Michael Killi issued a somewhat innocuous tweet suggesting the night was going to be long for “the person running the @newschannelnine Twitter account” what did Mike do?

You may not believe this, but Mike decided to retweet Michael’s tweet. #OMG

And finally, Mike Costa ventured over to his own Twitter account, and once again, issued another apology.

]]>Billed as “The Great Transformation”, its work was cut out for itself from the moment you could register online. A conference paying homage to the brilliance of Peter Drucker has now become an annual calendar fixture not to be missed. The 6th iteration of the Global Peter Drucker Forum — recently held in Vienna, naturally — has arguably become the TED or Davos of all leadership conferences. But could we shift into an era of “managing our way to prosperity,” as the conference sub-title suggested?

Could we achieve “The Great Transformation”?

Richard Straub, the Forum’s chief architect, asked a rhetorical question in his opening remarks to the Forum, “Have we reached a turning point?” The ‘we’ he referred to might have been leaders in today’s organizations. I reckon you could argue it was ‘society’ in general that needed an autopsy on turning points. Either way, I sat at my seat, took another look at magnificent mural on the ceiling, and answered the question Richard posed to myself.

No.

We haven’t reached a turning point.

At least not yet.

We’ve reached a crisis point.

Think of it as if you were a member of the G7, trying to sort out what to do about Russia, Vladimir Putin and the ongoing saga that is the Ukraine.

Richard went on to suggest Peter Drucker himself would have categorically stated that, “Management has a key role to play in this transformation.” Hard to disagree with Richard on that point, however, data suggests management remains ambivalent if not clueless to key transformative opportunities. Concepts such as maximizing shareholder value as the singular measure of success, bureaucracy and command and control tactics as the basis for organizational culture and leadership, amongst various human resources inanities that make it difficult to ever feel engaged at work are as prevalent today as traffic congestion on Silicon Valley’s Highway 101 will be decades from now.

Management is the problem. The crisis, ergo, is management.

If we are to reach a transformative “turning point” there would have been many more participants than the 2500 combined in-person and online attendees taking part in this year’s conference. This is not to take anything away from Richard or conference attendees — for these folks are the true trailblazers of organizational change — but if we are to see a great transformation in our lifetime, the Global Peter Drucker Forum ought to become the vehicle for the turning point itself. And we need more people involved to achieve that type of mission.

Quite frankly, the conference should have attracted more than a football stadium full of leaders who want to see such a transformation. “I wish us all an inspiring conference,” Richard gleefully uttered as he concluded his opening remarks. Indeed, it was an inspiring conference … but by the end of the two days it became a stark reminder of how far society needs to venture if we are to truly aspire to a “great transformation.”

Adi Ignateus, Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Business Review, stepped to the microphone looking joyful if not hopeful and bellowed,

“Our starting point is that things are not ok. Debt levels are high, respect for institutions is low, equality is suspect, and we can’t beat the stranglehold of short-term thinking.”

I wanted to give him an affectionate, Canadian polar bear hug — mostly because I’ve been banging on my drum about his opening statement for years — but I ran out of time because walking up on stage to deliver their opening morning keynotes were Pele, Maradona and Sir Bobby Charlton.

No, not really.

But would you believe the opening act included Clay Christensen, Gary Hamel and Roger Martin? This conference was about to get epic. What a triple-play bill of thought leaders to begin with.

The question this trio was tasked to answer was, “Is management up to today’s challenge?”

Renown Harvard Business School professor, Clay Christensen, — he of the disruption theory and accompanying models — claimed that growth comes from innovation and the link between growth and innovation is investment. Clay suggested there are three types of innovation:

Market creating innovations (only the rich have access to it) e.g. the computer. It’s the source of all corporate and national growth. The kind of innovations that allow access to more people and services.

Sustaining innovations – most of what we see today are sustaining innovations, he said. It helps an organization’s margins improve because they make markets vibrant. They don’t create growth, per se. These innovations are important but they are replicative.

Efficiency innovations – helps an organization get lean. If the firm doesn’t get more efficient, they get kicked out of the game sooner. It’s when an organization seeks to “do more with less” as an innovation strategy.

When I heard Clay gracefully and calmly explain the “efficiency innovation” example — using the term “do more with less” — I immediately felt my body go into uncontrollable spasms, reminded of the far-too-frequent number of times I’ve heard that soul-sucking phrase in my various workplace dealings. I always thought it was a practical joke of CFO’s to wax lyrical about doing more with less.

Where I felt Clay answered the question most effectively, however, was when he launched into a finance lesson on numerators and denominators. “Prior to 1980, measures of success were based on whole numbers,” he remarked. “For example, dollars were used as the measurement.” Now that made sense. But Clay went on to outline something I hadn’t thought of before.

“Finance has now given us measures to view how successful we are with capital. These are measures of how efficiently we are using capital. They are ratios and as we know, ratios have a numerator and a denominator.”

Although Clay didn’t come right out and say leaders need to revert back to reporting on and setting whole numbers as financial targets, he did crystalize the fact that there are now two levers to tweak so an organization can improve growth. Actually, it’s been going on for well over 30 years. This, in part, provided me with an answer to the question, “why have our organizations stagnated?”

If an organization wants to become more innovative, what they’re really playing around with isn’t innovation itself, but ratios of capital. This can’t be good. If an organization truly wanted to be innovative, it would invest in the numerator but if that proved too hard — if IRR (internal rates of return) were too low or too slow to achieve — the Finance and/or C-Suite could simply reduce the denominator on the capital ratio.

It’s obvious to me far too many firms are taking the easy way out and shirking their innovation responsibilities by nudging the denominator versus the numerator. Clay said as much by claiming capital has now become abundant and cheap, yet organizations husband it. He believes we’re going in the wrong direction and I couldn’t agree more. Innovation and thus investment in the numerator is required. We need to refrain from the fixation on share buybacks, and use the capital (i.e. the profit) to invest back in the numerator.

“We stand on the shoulders of others,” exclaimed another management guru Gary Hamel, as he took the stage in what can only be described as a frenetic delivery style, compared to Christensen at least. With the audience half-scared he might venture off the stage to deliver head-butts, he continued,

“How can we build organizations that are adaptable at its core?”

Gary answered his own question right out of the blocks. “Organizations aren’t up to the challenge,” he yelled. (Seriously, he yelled.)

I was scared.

“If the organization wants to survive, they have to transform themselves,” he continued. Ok, I’m with you Gary … but what’s your strategy for change?

He attempted to answer the rhetorical question I asked myself. Gary believes salvation and prosperity (there’s that word again) can be had if the goal of organizations becomes the process in which they can become a self-renewing organization. This happens by innovation which, as he stated, “is the fuel for renewal.” He outlined three approaches (they were questions in all honesty) to build a self-renewing organization:

How have employees been trained as a business investor?

If an employee has an idea, how can they get capital to launch it?

Is the organization measuring the investment/idea and attaching it back to compensation and other targets?

It’s hard to argue with Gary’s ideas, but three things donned on me when he concluded.

First, he’s loud.

Second, the culture within many organizations is far too closed and hierarchical as it stands today, therefore the steps outlined above will never occur unless it’s fixed.

Third, as Christensen pointed out, it’s far too easy for an organization to impose a “do more with less” mantra and to then fiddle with the denominator than it is to make innovation investments with the numerator. So in reality, this has to be fixed first — alongside the culture of an organization — before we can achieve the status of a self-renewing organization that he purports.

Gary is an enthusiastic speaker, replete with plenty of Tweetable catch-phrases — e.g. Management is the love child of Julius Caesar and Frederic Winslow Taylor by introducing command and control tactics and industrial engineering to organizations — but I’m not entirely convinced he effectively answered the question, “Is management up to today’s challenge?”

The final opening act soccer star (err, speaker) was fellow Canadian, Roger L. Martin, Academic Director of the Martin Prosperity (there’s that word again) Institute out of the Rotman School of Business in Toronto. Truth be told, I’ve always been a fan of Roger’s work. He long has railed against the “game” that has been played by publicly traded companies, analysts, hedge funds, pension corporations and the stock market. He, like me, yearns to bring balance to our organizations such that there may be a better sense of equilibrium between purpose and profit.

His talk, as I had hoped, delivered on multiple levels. Speaking on the “Structure of Democratic Capitalist Infrastructure” and how it has become what he calls “perverted”, Roger explained to a captivated audience that “patent trolls” exist solely to make money and they do so by raping and pillaging companies that want to use the technology for good. You should tweet that sentence.

With this inexcusable mindset in play, the infrastructure inside our organizations is set to be far too narrow, thus basing its interests on short termism type actions. As I am an opponent of maximizing shareholder value as the sole means to measure a business, Roger deftly argued (and phew, agrees with me) that this sort of deplorable corporate robbing creates stagnation, a lack of innovation, and a skewing of what the true purpose of an organization really should be.

It was fun to watch Clay Christensen walk off of the stage where he was seated so he could have a better view of Roger’s graphs and charts, which spoke volumes to Roger’s overarching thesis.

Notable comments from Roger throughout the conference included how:

“we’ve structured the corporate world in a way that facilitates the operation of bandits,”

and

“the highest rewards in today’s economy go to people who trade value, and not to the people who create value.”

As usual, Roger nailed it. (#mancrush)

The Global Peter Drucker Forum was two hours into its journey but, with a tear in my eye, I was becoming more depressed by the second. The talks to this point were splendid but the recipe for change — the master playbook for “The Great Transformation” — seemed complex and beyond our reach. Were my expectations off kilter? Or, perhaps, I was correct in asserting we were not at a turning point, but at a continued state of crisis.

The speakers continued throughout day one. Each took a turn identifying the problem, and for some, taking a crack at a solution.

“leaders are about the sustainability of the organization and that innovation is one of the tools at their disposal.”

More importantly, he felt leadership “is not just to build companies, but to create opportunities for all.” Alright, no disagreement from me on that point, but where’s the how?

Nancy Tennant, Vice-President of Innovation at Whirlpool Corporation suggested for an organization to become innovative — like what they allegedly accomplished at Whirlpool — they should define what innovation is to the firm, train employees on that definition, and then watch how innovation will become an operating norm. Ok, I’ll buy that.

Vineet Nayer, the former CEO of HCL — a company and leader I profiled in FLAT ARMY — stated the turnaround at HCL was due, in part, to a democratization of innovation where ideas were allowed to surface from anywhere, and decisions were made across any level.” He believed that an organization’s competitive advantage lies in “putting employees first, and customers second.” I’ve read the book, so if you’re looking for the ‘how’, there are some good examples you might want to investigate.

Would an economist have better luck answering our question? Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, gave it his best shot suggesting no one individual should be allowed to own a company. “No one can own a country,” Wolf further stated, “so the claim that shareholders should have absolute control of the company is false.” I liked where he was going. It reminded me of the work another economist — Bill Lazonick — had put forward recently on Harvard Business Review.

The real answer began to surface from him when he said, “If management is to use its position to benefit the company and society, it needs the best arrangement in which to do so.” His answer?

“The company should be seen as a semi-permanent institution and philosophically it should be set up much like a trustee relationship.”

Bingo! Wolf had set the table (it felt like a feast) and highlighted a possible answer to our vexing question. Perhaps Wolf was suggesting companies re-establish themselves as B-Corps, (I wrote about B-Corps on Huffington Post) otherwise known as Benefits Corporations? I’d be all for that idea.

Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor at NYU laid part of the blame on today’s business schools. He said, “Irrespective, there is an error of omission in business school education today without being exposed to market failures.” So, in part, an answer can come from the redevelopment of business school education such that market failures are addressed. I’ll agree to that, however, business schools need to take a long, hard look at what they’re teaching and (perhaps) think about a more balanced view of purpose with profit. (I have more to say on this when we make a spectacular announcement in January)

In his usual thoughtful and cerebrally controversial way, John Hagel — Co-Chair of the Deloitte Center for the Edge — claimed most companies are an unnatural bundle of three business types:

Infrastructure management business – high volume e.g. call center

Product innovation and commercialized – e.g. iPad

Customer relationship business – knowing customers better, and helping them more

He reminded us that Peter Drucker once wrote that the role of a CEO is to answer the questions, “what is our business, what should be our business, and what shouldn’t it be.” Hagel wondered aloud if the organization is to keep all three types of business types alive, the end game of the firm will undoubtedly be compromised.

Notably, John indicated between 1965 and present day, ROA (return on assets) has collapsed by 79%, attributing the decrease to a fixation on non-scalable institutions (i.e. the fixation on all three types of business models he defined) as opposed to implementing his answer, the scalable learning organization.

By the end of Day One, it was clear to me many smart people have thought an awful lot about the current crisis. Each had provided a wonderful snapshot explaining “what” was wrong but I still was missing the unified “how is this going to get fixed” answer.

Was there a unified answer out there?

Day two, thankfully, saw the inclusion of several more women delivering talks and panel discussions. Day one was heavily skewed toward the male gender. There were three talks in particular that I found further defined our current crisis, that also provided a glimpse into how our organizations might be fixed.

Rita Gunther McGrath, a professor at Columbia Business School, delivered a delightful talk suggesting “intelligent failures” need to become more common in today’s organizations. “You had a plan, you tested it, you knew what went wrong, you shared messages of failure, you learned from it, and you innovated again,” was how Rita explained the concept. My take from Rita’s talk was organizations need to be resilient and flexible — while not only being a learning organization — agreeing to gather and disseminate the tuition value from mistakes.

Nilofer Merchant, entrepreneur extraordinaire, took the conch and wonderfully hammered home the point that social is not a technology, it is a behaviour. (She actually stopped her talk mid-keynote and asked us to get social with someone beside us) Her point? The more people are allowed (and encouraged) to connect and collaborate, the greater payoff your organization will have downstream. I loved Nilofer’s message in addition to her delivery style, something I hadn’t yet experienced face-to-face. (If you haven’t watched her TED Talk, please do so. It’s a gem.)

Herminia Ibarra, a professor from Insead, gave incredible insight into the nuances of different types of leaders. From heroic, to charismatic, to visible, to individualistic, to peacetime/wartime, to collaborative, Herminia’s examples were insightful, funny and painful for their accuracy. I’ve always appreciated her work and the connections she makes between effective (and ineffective) leadership and the crisis we find ourselves in today’s organizations.

Photo Credit: Kenneth Mikkelsen (@LeadershipABC)

In the lead up to this year’s conference, I was asked by Steve Denning, author of Radical Management and one of the coolest provocateurs out there, if I wanted to a) speak at the conference as part of the track he was chairing and b) if I would work with him on a position paper outlining the hopes and dreams for the Drucker Forum itself.

I delivered a talk on day two, focusing my message on three key parts.

First, there is causality between an engaged organization and much improved business metrics.

Second, FLAT ARMY is a “how to” manual for organizations to achieve the open operating culture that can mitigate the issues found in today’s organizations.

And third, I used the platform to explain how a corporate culture change at TELUS (my place of work since 2008) helped to increase employee engagement from 53% to 83% while improving countless business metrics in parallel.

The bottom line? If you create an inspired, empowered, authentic and collaborative organization, an innovative, customers first output will be the result. This leads to what so many organizations yearn for … improved business AND non-business results.

The paper we worked on (with Bill Fisher, Haydn Christensen and Nick Dixson) was posted to Forbes before the conference began, and in it, we posed three questions:

Should firms make the shift from the goal of maximizing shareholder value as measured by the current stock price to a principal focus on adding value to those for whom the work is being done?

Should organizations make the shift from the practices of hierarchical bureaucracy to the collaborative leadership and management practices of the Creative Economy?

Should organizations make a shift from metrics that reflect narrow financial goals to metrics that reflect contributions to prosperity of individuals, organizations and society, for achieving both purpose and profit?

Whilst the aforementioned questions were not answered at the Drucker Forum outright, I left thinking I wasn’t alone.

From the various speakers, to the attendees I spoke with, to several meaningful and deep conversations, — it’s evident everyone is (for the most part) on the same page.

We may not be at a turning point but we’re all acutely aware of the crisis we’ve gotten ourselves into.

The questions found above were met with unanimous agreement from a Drucker Forum choir of voices that sang, “but of course, we need to change” in collective harmony. Given we were in Vienna, it was fitting. We left the conference with an agreement on the ‘what’. Phew. Now we need action on the ‘how’. And we need it ASAP.

As Clay Christensen remarked in the closing comments to the conference,

“Let’s take the best of each other’s ideas and languages, — our ways of communicating — share, focus and then standardize to make change.”

Hallelujah. That sounded like a mission to prosperity indeed. (There’s that word again, only this time there were violas playing.)

]]>It’s not exactly the easiest set of flights between Victoria, British Columbia and Vienna, Austria, but I’d travel twice the distance to take part.

The Global Peter Drucker Forum is one of those rare conferences where one believes change might actually occur. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m up at 4:30am Vienna time, writing these words.

The sub-plot to this year’s conference is “The Great Transformation: Managing our Way to Prosperity”. It couldn’t be more blunt. It couldn’t be more timely.

Our organizations – for-profit, not-for-profit or government – are in dire need of a transformation. One might argue the opportunity is ‘great’. One might also argue we need a clear path toward a different kind of prosperity, one I like to refer to as “purpose with profit“.

In the lead up to this year’s conference, I was asked by Steve Denning (I know, Steve Denning!) if I wanted to a) speak at the conference and b) work with him on a position paper outlining our hopes and dreams for the Drucker Forum itself.

Should firms make the shift from the goal of maximizing shareholder value as measured by the current stock price to a principal focus on adding value to those for whom the work is being done?

Should organizations make the shift from the practices of hierarchical bureaucracy to the collaborative leadership and management practices of the Creative Economy?

Should organizations make a shift from metrics that reflect narrow financial goals to metrics that reflect contributions to prosperity of individuals, organizations and society, for achieving both purpose and profit?

Maybe it’s the jet lag and the fact it’s still Wednesday where I come from (as opposed to Thursday morning as I’m typing) but in all honesty, I not only want those questions answered from above, I’d like to see action taken.

Since the early 1970’s, we have witnessed not only the fundamental collapse in the principles of an organization (from an equilibrium with stakeholders to a myopic fixation on shareholders) we have instituted leadership & management practices that define ‘shock and horror’ if not ‘shock and awe’.

We should not be proud.

In fact, we ought to be frightened.

I am the proud father of three young goats (Claire is 11, Cole is 9 and Cate is 7) and if I ask for anything from the Drucker Forum 2014 — if there is an altruistic hope I yearn for — it is to create the conditions that bring balance back to our organizations. This is “the great transformation” required today. I do not want to saddle my children with what has become a societal norm in today’s organization. That norm that oozes out of any sort of organization is hierarchical, closed, fanatical for profit, and disdain if not ignorance for the future of humanity.

When the C-Suite begins to look at employees not as costs — not as headcount — but as investments in the firm’s future success, that is the precise moment when we have achieved a return to organizational equilibrium.

When the Board of Directors stamps their hands on the boardroom table demanding a return to the equal balance of interests that concerns all stakeholders — community, employees, customers and shareholders — only then do we have a true path to prosperity.

It was none other than Peter Drucker who once wrote, “To know what a business is, we have to start with its purpose. Its purpose must be outside of the business itself. In fact, it must lie in society since business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.” (The Practice of Management. Peter Drucker. 1954. HarperCollins)

Fellow Canadian and Drucker Forum speaker Roger Martin wrote in his book Fixing the Game, “We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value. Companies should place customers at the center of the firm and focus on delighting them, while earning an acceptable return for shareholders.” (Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL. Roger Martin. 2011. Harvard Business Review Press.)

I am wrapping up my next book and I thought it would be fitting to include my definition of the purpose of an organization. At the risk of attempting to outdo several literary and leadership giants, might I suggest the following:

“An organization’s ideal is to delight its customers through an engaged and purpose-focused workforce, acting ethically within society while delivering just profitability.”

I’m delighted and proud to be at the Drucker Forum 2014.

I’d be even more delighted and proud if this conference were to be the lightning rod for actual, meaningful change.

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]]>Truth be told, I’m a bit of a research wonk. Some may look at that honest admission as a cry for help. Others steer clear of me when I ingest new data because it allegedly makes me more likely to furl a brow as I further scorn the lack of leadership advancement in today’s organizations. This ‘feedback’ may or may not come from my beloved wife.

A professional body for HR and people development. It has over 130,000 members internationally working in HR, learning and development, people management and consulting across private businesses and organisations in the public and voluntary sectors. As an independent and not for profit organisation, the CIPD is committed to championing better work and working lives for the benefit of individuals, business, the economy and wider society – because good work and all it entails is good for business and society at large, and what is good for business should also be good for people’s working lives.

The survey is important because it provides insight into several facets of career and talent development as well as employee engagement. The latest version is no different.

The highlights for me in this edition include:

33% of employees indicate that their careers have failed to live up to their aspirations

12% of respondents indicated their career has actually exceeded their expectations

37% state that their career aspirations are unlikely to be met by their current employer

Employee engagement has risen from 35% to 38%

Net job satisfaction scores have risen two points to 44%

Job satisfaction was the most important factor identified in contributing to satisfaction with career or working life (72%).

Work–life balance was the second most important factor (66%).

59% agree or strongly agree they have a proper work-life balance

39% of employees report that they experience excessive pressure every day or once or twice a week

What does this mean?

Quite simply, there is still much work to be done in today’s organizations when it comes to employee engagement, career and talent development and culture. What is being introduced by leaders to deliver on the requirements for organizational culture change is not enough.

As leaders, we cannot be pleased with an increase in employee engagement from 35% to 38%. There is no cause for celebration at such anemically low levels as reported by CIPD.

As leaders, we cannot be pleased that one-third of employees think their careers have not — nor will ever reach — a self-identified level of expectation that is appropriate. (we might even toss in the word, “thriving”)

As leaders, we cannot lose sight that there is a causal relationship between an engaged employee who performs ‘the work’ (who is completely satisfied in their role) and various improved business metrics as a result of such harmony in the workplace. When he or she is able to occupy a proper work-life balance while feeling devoid of excessive and unnecessary workplace pressure, amazing, innovative outcomes manifest.

Reading the data from CIPD (once again) indicates to me the transformation of our organizations is only in its nascent stage. I’m not sure it’s even started in certain organizations.

]]>SAP was kind enough to interview me and produce a case study related to the Pervasive Learning model at TELUS, and its alignment to culture and employee engagement.

As I state in the report,

“Engagement is a multifaceted strategy. It shouldn’t be treated as a silo, as a separate line item. You can’t engage your people if you’re just yelling at them in a classroom to do better on a test. If you include learning as part of your holistic approach to your organizational culture, I think you will be in a much better spot.”

Christopher Koch, Editorial Director of the SAP Center for Business Insight, also wrote a post on LinkedIn touching on parts of the case study.

You can download a copy of the case study by clicking here or on the graphic to the right.

]]>Today, October 14, 2014, is Ada Lovelace Day – an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Ada was the world’s first female computer programmer – a true icon and pioneer.

Denise and I are bringing up our two girls with a focus on STEM with equal footing to writing, art, physical exercise, reading and social skills. Ours is a house where STEM is encouraged not frowned upon.

When Claire – our eldest of three children – asked me one day if she could have her own blog, given she saw ‘Daddio’ doing it on a ‘more-than-regular-basis’, the answer was rather obvious. “Yes of course dear,” I replied with pride oozing out of every orifice. “Let’s pick that apple up off the ground beside the tree and see how we make it happen.”

Sadly, the metaphor was lost on her, but we got to work anyway.

Without hesitation, and within a matter of minutes, we had secured www.clairepontefract.com and opened up a WordPress site attaching it to the new domain name. (Thank the Lord there are no other Claire Pontefract’s on the planet.)

Back to Claire. She was eight years old in September of 2011 and part of the reason for wanting a blog was due to starting a new school, in a new city. She wanted a means to communicate her feelings, thoughts and ideas about such a transition. Her first post is more of an introduction, “new school. new community.” but you get the picture. I’ve always said, “behaviour before tool, and form before function” … and in this case, Claire was eager to share and communicate, not to use it as a basis for fame and/or fortune.

I was rather proud of her request. After all, she was only eight years old. I might have been in awe as well. Some have scoffed, and suggested we shouldn’t allow a young child to write in the open, divulging her real name, photos, etc. on the internet. That’s not the way we’re raising the children. The digital train left the station long ago, and our approach as parents and educators is to raise them with sufficient knowledge, STEM skills, experience and understanding about what is right and wrong in the digital hemispheres that Al Gore created for us. (bless him) If that means instructing the girls about digital predators, “bad men” and so on, how is it different from teaching them what to do in face-to-face interactions? Is learning HTML a sin?

For the record, I’ve never received an apple on Halloween with a razor blade embedded in the core, but we still check any apples that pop out of the Halloween goodie sack … out of habit from when we were children. That’s akin to letting the wee ones publicly blog, while teaching them about the good and the not-so-good of the interwebs. It should become a habit. It should become a STEM skill.

Our youngest, Cate, started kindergarten as a five-year old in 2012. Drenched in tears and a quivering lip, Cate approached Denise and I one day in early November and asked if she could start her own blog, like her big sister Claire, and of course, big brother Cole. (He had started his own blog six months earlier.) The tears stemmed from the death of our cat, Polly. Like Claire, she wanted to use the blog as a vehicle to communicate, and with her first post entitled, “How Polly Died,” Cate launched herself into the blogosphere rivaling only Robert Scoble. (Well, when he was actually blogging and not centralizing his blogging world to Facebook.)

And no, it wasn’t a typo.

She was five.

There are other reasons for allowing such public prose.

First of all, it’s a means to learning better grammar and spelling. Every story or blog post is vetted by one of the (still) happily married parents (thank you scrumptious red wine), and we use it as a teaching moment. Sometimes we sit around discussing topics or ideas, which is (I suppose) a form of family brain-storming. (hashtag #nerdfamily) What we’re trying to do somewhat surreptitiously is to improve the creativity processes and imagination habits of a wee mind.

Secondly, no post can be published unless pre-approved by a parent. (see above) That’s where the Mommio-Daddio hierarchy kicks in.

Thirdly, being in the open is where the world is heading and we’d rather the girls be leaders in “open communication” than followers. We’d rather they be STEM leaders than not. A couple of examples come to mind. Claire loves to write about what influences her, so stories about leadership and people like Simon Ibell, Terry Fox or Rosa Parks can be found on the site. She not only learns from the writing process, she may get a comment or question or two that helps to reinforce the learning.

In the case of Cate, while younger than her older sister by four years, it’s still an opportunity to express feelings and opinions. Aside from the death of Polly, Cate will reflect (publicly) on issues like the environment or fallen soldiers.

So, Claire – now 11 – has been writing away for over three years where there have been nearly 10,000 views and 750 non-spam comments on her 75 posts. (you know, real ones from real people) She’s chuffed at the interaction she gets, that is for certain.

The younger prodigy, Cate – now 7 – has been writing for two years and has 3,200 views and 220 comments. She musters up the energy to normally write twice a month. (that’s after she is forced to cook all the meals, clean the dishes, and put out the trash … obviously)

If you’re unaware of my humour, I’m kidding.

I suppose you might say that by allowing (and thus teaching) the habits of blogging with the girls, we’re also instilling a sense of community, connection and of course pride when people view or comment on their writing.

I wouldn’t want it any other way, and I reckon the girls are in the same boat.

It’s a bit of a social science experiment – after all, anything related to parenting is a real-time experiment as there is no agreed upon blueprint – but I truly believe in the long run, this will be a good thing for them and not the opposite. Blogging — and writing in the open — is a compliment to STEM, and ultimately to Ada Lovelace.

And then one day, a different Claire Pontefract reached out to me on Twitter — based in Northern England — and I breathed a large sigh of relief knowing there will only ever be one www.clairepontefract.com out there. True story.

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]]>I’d be delighted to hear your opinion on the following definitions of “Workplace Mindsets” I’m toying with in relation to my next book.

Job Mindset: Employed to perform transactional duties in return for being monetarily compensated.

Career Mindset: Working in an occupation to increase the personal girth of salary, title and/or span of control.

Purpose Mindset: Passionate and committed to a meaningful & engaging workplace among all stakeholders.

I’ve already written the sections that pertain to job, career and purpose mindsets … but the definitions themselves can change.

If you have any feedback or suggestions, I’d love to read them below. Many thanks in advance. (and as is customary, I’ll be sure to attribute in the acknowledgements section of the book – after all, what good is a book if you’re not asking for opinion from time to time – even via a personal website)

]]>Life can be like an oak tree, with its bountiful or at times sparse acorn crops.

Some animals will survive on an oak’s annual output … or, due to a dearth of acorns, they may not survive at all. But each year, the oak tree is there, full of memories from previous harvests, standing tall, trying its best to produce.

Some years I feel as though I’ve received an overabundance of acorns from my oak tree, and other years I’m left wondering why I’ve been short-changed.

It’s love juxtaposed with pain.

It’s warmth surrounded by storm.

It’s a rainbow of irony set behind the oak itself.

In the end, however, that solid, unwavering, stoic oak tree is my beacon of memories. It’s my tree-ring of the past. I look to it for inspiration and for reflection.

]]>We are in the midst of one of the greatest eras of technological, social and cultural change. Today, mobile and other technologies keep us constantly connected, and this shift has affected how we interact with our families, how we spend our leisure time, and naturally, how we work.

This change is creating an opportunity for companies to shift how they think about and conduct the daily practice of work. And businesses are starting to make the shift. According to IDC, the mobile worker population is set to increase to 73% of the workforce by 2016. Interestingly, there is a correlation to workers who are offered a flexible work arrangement and both loyalty and productivity. For example, a Harris/Decima study found that 67% of workers were more loyal to companies that offer a flexible work environment, and 73% stated that that it positively affected their productivity.

I work at TELUS, and have done so since late 2008. It has been a remarkable journey, one that I’m proud to be associated with. One particular component to our relative success is we’ve developed something called Work Styles™. It’s a program more than a technology. At its root, Work Styles is a cultural shift towards empowering team members with the tools, resources and support they need to work when and where they’re most effective and productive. To put things into perspective, we’re an $11.7 billion global company with over 45,000 employees.

We’ve realized some fantastic and positive outcomes of the Work Styles program, including how it:

Increases employee engagement and promotes healthy work-life balance;

Differentiates employers in attracting and retaining top talent;

Reduces real estate footprint and environmental impact;

Produces significant cost savings for the company.

How we know it works

To confirm the success of our Work Styles program, we commissioned Western University’s Richard Ivey School of Business to conduct a study between February 2013 and February 2014.

The study included focus groups and quantitative research to compare office resident, home, and mobile knowledge workers. More than 2,000 knowledge workers and managers at TELUS participated in the research.

The study found that Work Styles is associated with many positive outcomes and confirmed TELUS’ belief that the most engaged and productive team members are empowered to work when and where they are most productive. The study also revealed areas where team members faced challenges in a Work Styles environment, uncovering invaluable insight for leaders.

Empowering employees to work when and where they are most productive offers four big business benefits:
Increased employee engagement: Mobile and at-home employees reported that their work interfered less with their home lives than their in-office counterparts. We credit improved work-life balance as playing a key role in the company’s world-leading employee engagement score which has risen from 53% to 83% over the same time period. Engagement scores for mobile and at-home team members are even higher at 84% and 85% respectively.
Attracting and retaining top talent: As an increasing number of millennials enter the workplace, flexible working programs can be a huge differentiator for employers trying to recruit and retain a new generation of workers. We’ve witnessed the number of resumes received into TELUS double since 2010. The study also found that mobile and at-home workers were less likely to leave their jobs.

Reduced operating costs: With employees working from home, organizations can reduce their real-estate footprint, leading to significant savings in lease and energy costs. Large companies with offices across the country can also save millions in travel costs each year by investing in tools and technology to collaborate remotely. In 2013 we realized $14 million in travel savings alone, and reduced our overall real estate leasing costs by $40 million with a 40% reduction in real estate our overall footprint.

Lower carbon footprint: When companies downsize their office spaces and cut down on business trips, not only are they saving money, they’re reducing carbon emissions by several thousand tonnes. By eliminating commutes, companies can also help take cars off the road. At TELUS, Work Styles helped eliminate more than 19 million kilometers and 1.1 million hours of commuting in 2013.

“With Work Styles, TELUS team members maintained their performance, exhibited increased loyalty, and experienced lower stress and less family/job conflict.” Alison Konrad, Professor of Organizational Behaviour, The Richard Ivey School of Business (co-author of the study)

Other interesting tidbits from the study included:

Mobile and at-home workers reported better work-life balance.

98% of mobile workers and 99% of at-home workers reported low to moderate impact of work duties on their home and family life, compared to 71% of resident workers.

Mobile and at-home workers demonstrated increased loyalty.

100% of mobile and at-home workers were considered low-risk of leaving TELUS.

Mobile and at-home workers were considered equally productive as their resident colleagues.

Leaders showed no differences in their ratings of productivity or performance of mobile, at-home and resident workers.

We aren’t the only ones to realize significant correlation between a flexible work program and bottom line benefits. In a study where call center agents were given the opportunity to work from home for nine months, Stanford University Professor of Economics, Nicholas Bloom, found that those working from home were more than 13% productive, quit 50% less and indicated they were much happier on the job.

Because of the success of the program, we’ve set a goal to have 70% of the TELUS workforce “Work Styled” by 2015. We currently sit at just over 60%. We’ve also set a goal to achieve 90% employee engagement by 2018.

]]>I read with disdain about IBM’s dubious plan to reduce the pay of some of its workers by 10 percent in order for them to improve their skills.

Patrick Thibodeau of Computerworld reported the finding on September 15, 2014. He asked IBM spokeswoman Trink Guarino about the initiative:

“IBM is implementing a skills development program for a small number of U.S. employees. Under this program, these employees will spend one day a week developing skills in key growth areas such as cloud, analytics, mobile and social.”

That’s just about the point at which I went into a silent fit of apoplectic rage.

Here’s my view on the matter.

An employer has the fiduciary responsibility to employees to provide the learning, development and training required for them to successfully perform in their current role.

Put another way, an employee has the contractual right to the necessary learning, development and training for them to perform per the responsibilities and actions as outlined in their contract of employment or role description. (whichever makes the most sense)

For an employee seeking new responsibilities — and thus a new role or promotion — in the organization, the fiduciary responsibility between the organization and the employee no longer exists. In fact, an employee must earn the right to receive such investment.

Simply put: current role requirements is a company responsibility and next role possibilities is earned. (although when earned, the company is making the investment as well)

It seemed to me in this example that IBM is applying the sharpest of their nails on the chalkboard of stupidity, eliciting shrieking sounds that have sent animals of all makes into fits of confusing bewilderment.

If the company requires these 100 or so employees to ramp up their ‘current role’ skills on such aspects as “cloud, analytics, mobile and social,” perhaps they’ve forgotten it’s actually their responsibility in which to do so. If it’s a requirement for their existing role, it’s IBM’s fiduciary responsibility to the employee to provide such development.

So, it seems they are in fact doing this … however, how does the organization look itself in the mirror of employee engagement and think that docking the pay of these poor 100 employees by 10 percent is also on the menu of a fiduciary responsibility?

It’s appalling.

I’m left speechless, flabbergasted and irate.

My heart goes out to these 100 people, but so too it goes out to the entire organization.

I hope it is reversed for the sake of company-wide employee engagement, not to mention their brand and potential customer backlash.

Dan's Related Posts:

]]>I recently had the chance to reflect on the ‘future of the organization’. I suppose it’s one of my hobbies. Thanks to the kind folks at SAP, my thoughts on topics such as “What is Shared Leadership?”, “What If There Were No 9-5 Jobs?”, and “What If We Never Meet Co-Workers Face-to-Face?” have been captured and are shared below in video format.

Dan's Related Posts:

]]>A few years ago, I had the chance to ask Daniel Pink — author of the books Driveand To Sell is Human — if there were any secrets to his exquisite writing skill. After all, he’s sold more than five million books, so he’s obviously made some fantastic writing connections.

“Earplugs,” he said without hesitation. “When it’s crunch time, and I need to concentrate on my writing, I use earplugs.”

I’ve tried earplugs a few times — after all, it’s Dan Pink — but for some strange reason, I ended up distracted because (ironically) I couldn’t hear myself think.

I’m in the midst of my first ever MOOC, which is the reason for this post. Offered by edX and in partnership with The University of Queensland, the course authors of Write101x English Grammar and Style asked learners to write a 300-word blog post regarding the writing-thinking-learning connection.

That’s when I recalled with vivid fondness my encounter with Dan Pink and his earplug writing-thinking-learning connection strategy.

I make my connection in two ways with my writing.

First, whenever I’ve met with an individual or a group of people, that conversation often triggers something in my brain. An actual connection is made, so I quickly write it down. Typically I use Evernote, the cloud-based app that encourages users to “remember everything”. The new connection is often re-purposed for other forms of writing. I suppose it’s akin to a writer’s double-entry journal where I’m thinking and learning about what I’ve unearthed.

The second connection often comes in moments of quietude. When I’m on my bike or an airplane, an idea will formulate. Wherever I might be, I will stop to write it down. It then gestates, as I think and learn how it can be used as a golden nugget for some form of prose later on.

Earplugs unnecessary. Sorry Dan.

<end of course requirement blog post>

If you’re wondering why I’ve enrolled into the Write101x English Grammar and Style course … the answer is three-fold:

MOOC

I committed to myself at the beginning of 2014 to register, participate and complete a MOOC this year. I want to learn about the MOOC culture, and particularly how edX is running their version of MOOCs. I’m honouring my commitment to learn about MOOCs by selecting a course where (I hope) thousands of users will participate so I can properly gauge for myself a) how it works and b) what pro’s and con’s there are for such a ‘massive’ course.

Grammar

I love to learn, and I love to write. The learning part is easy, the writing part is easy too … although I often make up my own language and grammar rules. (people around me call it “Danism’s” – I believe it’s a term of endearment, but I could be wrong) I thought it would be great to have a refresher on the rules I ignore. I also thought it might be good to learn a grammar lesson or two, given I have equal propensity to think I actually know what I’m doing as a writer.

Procrastination

I’m in the midst of completing Book #2 but I need a distraction. I could continue to look at real estate properties online — do we knock down a house and build from scratch, gut the interior of another, or just wait for the perfect house to show up on the market, which is likely never — or I might use my time more wisely, by knocking off bullet points number one and two from above. (besides, the book may end up being infinitely better if I up my grammar game and refrain from misuses of semi-colons and colons ad nauseam)